Public Sphere & Media
Habermas defines this ideal space as where citizens debate matters of common concern through rational-critical discussion.
The public sphere
According to Nixon, this term describes how platforms like Google shape cultural access through search ranking.
Googlization
Parkin argues that games build communities by offering players this psychological experience of acceptance.
Belonging
Douglas’s term for the illusion that feminism has already succeeded, allowing media to revive sexist imagery.
Enlightened sexism
Hall’s approach that studies how audiences accept, negotiate, or resist media messages.
Reception or encoding-decoding model
Postman argues that television transforms public discourse into this, undermining rational debate.
Entertainment
Nixon argues that users create economic value simply by doing this: consuming and making meaning.
Labor (or digital audience labor)
Games like Papers, Please allow players to “walk in someone else’s shoes,” enhancing this capacity.
Empathy
This concept describes feminist gains becoming so normalized in media that structural inequality gets overlooked.
Embedded feminism
Media portrayals of heterosexual romance as the unquestioned default reflect this cultural norm.
Heteronormativity
Shirky contrasts the “instrumental” view of social media with this alternative approach that focuses on long-term political conditions shaped by platforms.
The environmental approach
Platforms profiting from user data, clicks, and engagement without paying users resembles this philosopher's idea of unpaid value production.
Karl Marx
Parkin critiques “monkey see, monkey do” theories by shifting focus from game content to game _______.
Communities or culture
Douglas warns that media often encourages women to express empowerment by buying things, turning feminism into a type of personal lifestyle. Critics call this _________ feminism.
Consumer (or commodity or market)
Analyzing how media portray gender roles, e.g., femininity as passive, masculinity as aggressive, is part of this critique.
Feminist critique
Habermas warns that when citizens become spectators rather than participants, the public sphere undergoes this regression.
Refeudalization
This theorist argues that the attention economy treats users’ focus as a scarce resource that can be extracted and monetized.
Tiziana Terranova
Jackson Katz argues that media present toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance as essential parts of this male identity.
Masculinity (or the tough guise)
Kramer & Harris ask whether this generation of men holds sexist attitudes similar to previous generations.
Millennial men
Ads repeat simplified images of how men and women “should” behave; media scholars call these patterns this.
Gender tropes
Postman compares modern media’s harms to these two dystopian authors—one obsessed with pain, the other with pleasure.
Orwell and Huxley
Chen’s article examines the emotional toll on workers performing this hidden, traumatic job for social media companies.
Content moderation
Parkin argues that some games generate emotional impact by forcing players to make difficult choices that shape the story. This design feature is known as player _______.
Agency
Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly critiques ads for turning women’s bodies into these for visual consumption.
Objects
This concept describes how media often present a tidy, polished version of reality, shaping how audiences imagine groups, places, or cultures, even when those images are incomplete.
Global imagination